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The American Place Theatre
The American Place Theatre was founded in 1963 by Wynn Handman, Sidney Lanier, and Michael Tolan at St. Clement's Church, 423 West 46th Street in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, and was incorporated as a not-for-profit theatre in that year. Tennessee Williams and Myrna Loy were two of the original board members. Achievements The first full production at this off-Broadway theatre was ''The Old Glory'', a trilogy of three one-acts by the poet Robert Lowell, produced in November 1964. The play would go on to win five Obie Awards the following year, including "Best American Play." In addition to producing Robert Lowell's first play, The American Place Theatre has produced and developed the first plays of outstanding writers from other literary forms including Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, Paul Goodman, H. L. Mencken, Joyce Carol Oates, S. J. Perelman, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, May Swenson, and Robert Penn Warren. Significant playwrights have been nurtured and, in many cases, initia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wynn Handman
Wynn Handman (May 19, 1922 – April 11, 2020) was the Artistic Director of The American Place Theatre, which he co-founded with Sidney Lanier and Michael Tolan in 1963. His role in the theatre was to seek out, encourage, train, and present new and exciting writing and acting talent and to develop and produce new plays by living American writers. In addition, he initiated several Arts Education Programs, such as ''Literature to Life''. His life and the history of The American Place Theatre are the subjects of the 2019 documentary ''It Takes a Lunatic.'' Handman died during the COVID-19 pandemic due to complications brought on by COVID-19. Early life Handman grew up in the Inwood, Manhattan, Inwood neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. Handman studied acting at Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in New York City. In 1949 he created the role of Sentry Hallam in the world premiere of Louis O. Coxe and Robert H. Chapman's ''B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sam Shepard
Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American actor, playwright, author, screenwriter, and director whose career spanned half a century. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play ''Buried Child'' and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in the 1983 film ''The Right Stuff (film), The Right Stuff''. He received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. ''New York (magazine), New York'' magazine described Shepard as "the greatest American playwright of his generation." Shepard's plays are known for their bleak, poetic, surrealist elements, black comedy, and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society. His style evolved from the absurdism of his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Chickencoop Chinaman
''The Chickencoop Chinaman'' is a 1972 play by Frank Chin. It was the first play written by an Asian American to have a major New York production. Story Tam Lum, a Chinese American filmmaker working on a documentary about a black boxer named Ovaltine, has arrived in Pittsburgh to visit Ovaltine's father, Charley Popcorn. In Pittsburgh, he stays with his childhood friend, the Japanese American Kenji, who lives in Pittsburgh's black ghetto with his girlfriend Lee and her son. In Act I, Tam has just arrived and is catching up with Kenji. In Act II, the two men meet with Charley and bring him back to the apartment, where Lee's ex-husband has shown up to take her back. These scenes are intercut with fantasy sequences, such as one in which Tam meets his childhood hero, the Lone Ranger. Characters * Tam Lum: a filmmaker who grew up in Chinatown but has adopted the inflections of black speech in honor of his hero, Ovaltine Jack Dancer, a black boxer about whom he is making a documenta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Chin
Frank Chin (born February 25, 1940) is an American author and playwright. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of Asian-American theatre. Life and career Frank Chin was born in Berkeley, California on February 25, 1940; until the age of six, he remained under the care of a retired vaudeville couple in Placerville, California. At that time, his mother brought him back to the San Francisco Bay Area and thereafter Chin grew up in Oakland Chinatown. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, and graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1965. According to Chin, who had returned from a sabbatical working as the first Chinese brakeman for the Southern Pacific railroad, he intimidated a dean into graduating him with a bachelor's degree in English: " said'I want a decision by Friday' and he said, 'Well, I'm a very busy man,' and I said, 'You're a working stiff like me - you have a decision Friday and I don't care what it is. Either I've graduated or I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Nelson (playwright)
Richard John Nelson (born October 17, 1950) is an American playwright and librettist. He wrote the book for the 2000 Broadway musical ''James Joyce's The Dead'', for which he won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, as well as the book for the 1988 Broadway production of ''Chess''. He is also the writer of the critically acclaimed play cycle ''The Rhinebeck Panorama''. Personal life Nelson was born in Chicago, Illinois to Viola, a dancer, and Richard Finis Nelson, an accounting-systems analyst and some times sales representative. During Nelson's childhood, the family moved frequently to accommodate his father's work, but they settled for long stretches in Gary, Indiana, the outskirts of Philadelphia, and finally in a suburb of Detroit. Nelson's earliest theatrical influences were in musical theatre, and he estimates that he saw more than twenty-five musicals before ever seeing his first straight play. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1972, and received an honorary Do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emily Mann (director)
Emily Betsy Mann (born April 12, 1952) is an American director, playwright and screenwriter. She served as the artistic director and resident playwright of the McCarter Theatre Center from 1990 to 2020. Career As the McCarter Theatre Center's Artistic Director and Resident Playwright from 1990 to 2020, Mann oversaw more than 160 productions, including more than 40 world premieres. During her tenure, the theater won the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre and Mann herself was twice nominated for Tony Awards as a playwright and director. She was inducted into The American Theater Hall of Fame. Her other personal awards include the Peabody Award, the Hull-Warriner Award from the Dramatists Guild, awards from the NAACP, eight Obie awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2011 Person of the Year Award from the National Theater Conference, as well as the Margo Jones Award, given to a "citizen-of-the-theatre who has demonstrated a lifetime commitment to the encouragement of the l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Alfred
William Alfred (August 16, 1922 – May 20, 1999) was an American playwright, poet, and professor of English literature at Harvard University. Biography Alfred was born into an Irish family in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a bricklayer and his mother was a telephone operator. He graduated from St. Francis Preparatory School in 1940. Alfred was drafted in 1943, two years into his undergraduate studies at Brooklyn College. He served in the Army tank corps and quartermaster's corps in World War II for four years. While in the army, he was taught Bulgarian at a language school and then stationed in the South Pacific, where he wrote poems for ''American Poet''. Alfred completed his B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1948 with the help of the G.I. Bill. Alfred is a double graduate of Harvard University, where he specialized in the literature of Medieval England, receiving his A.M. and Ph.D. in English in 1949 and 1954 respectively.“Past Recipients of the Harvard Medal” ''Harvard ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jonathan Reynolds (writer)
Jonathan Reynolds (February 13, 1942October 27, 2021) was an American writer. He practiced as an actor for a short period before becoming a writer. He wrote for David Frost and Dick Cavett before a breakthrough with two comedy plays (''Rubbers'' and ''Yanks 3, Detroit 0, Top of the Seventh'') which ran off-Broadway in 1975. His most successful play was ''Geniuses'' at Playwrights Horizons in 1982, which was inspired by his time on the set of the war movie ''Apocalypse Now''. Reynolds wrote several screenplays, receiving praise for his writing on the 1984 romantic comedy ''Micki & Maude''. His other film work was less well received and he was awarded the 1988 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screenplay for 1987's ''Leonard Part 6''. Reynolds returned to writing plays in the late 1990s and received a Pulitzer Prize for Drama nomination for his work on the 1997 play ''Stonewall Jackson’s House''. He wrote a food column for ''The New York Times Magazine'' between 2000 and 200 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Hauptman
Born in Texas, William Hauptman received a BFA from the University of Texas Drama Department and later traveled to San Francisco and New York. A graduate who received an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, he is the author of both plays and fiction. Work His various plays include: ''Shearwater'' (American Place Theater) (1974) ''Heat'' (The Public Theater) (1974) And ''Domino Courts and Comanche Cafe'' (1976) at the American Place Theatre which won a Village Voice Obie Award (1977). '' Big River'' (1985), his adaptation of Mark Twain's ''Huckleberry Finn'', written in collaboration with composer Roger Miller, won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical when it opened on Broadway. It has proven very popular in stock and amateur theatrical productions. Hauptman joined the project after being approached by former Yale classmate Rocco Landesman. Hauptman is also a writer of fiction. His first published story, ''Good Rockin' Tonight'', about an Elv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phillip Hayes Dean
Phillip Hayes Dean (January 17, 1931 – April 14, 2014) was an American stage actor and playwright. Death Hayes died on April 14, 2014, aged 83, in Los Angeles, California from an aortic aneurysm An aortic aneurysm is an enlargement (dilatation) of the aorta to greater than 1.5 times normal size. They usually cause no symptoms except when ruptured. Occasionally, there may be abdominal, back, or leg pain. The prevalence of abdominal aortic .... References External links * 1931 births 2014 deaths Male actors from Chicago American male stage actors Deaths from aortic aneurysm 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights {{US-playwright-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ed Bullins
Edward Artie Bullins (July 2, 1935November 13, 2021), sometimes publishing as Kingsley B. Bass Jr, was an American playwright. He won awards including the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and several Obie Awards. Bullins was associated with the Black Arts Movement and the Black Panther Party, for which he was the minister of culture in the 1960s. Early life and education Edward Artie Bullins was born on July 2, 1935, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Bertha Marie ( Queen) and Edward Bullins. He was raised primarily by his mother. As a child, he attended a predominantly white elementary school and became involved with a gang. He attended Benjamin Franklin High School, where he was stabbed in a gang-related incident. Shortly thereafter, he dropped out of high school and joined the navy. During this period, he won a boxing championship, returned to Philadelphia, and enrolled in night school. He stayed in Philadelphia until moving to Los Angeles in 1958. He married poet and act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
María Irene Fornés
María Irene Fornés (May 14, 1930 – October 30, 2018) was a Cuban-American playwright, theater director, and teacher who worked in off-Broadway and experimental theater venues in the last four decades of the twentieth century. Her plays range widely in subject-matter, but often depict characters with aspirations that belie their disadvantages. Fornés, who went by the name "Irene", received nine Obie Theatre Awards in various categories and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for 1990. ''New Yorker'' critic Hilton Als wrote in 2010 that she had done "more than her fair share in terms of changing the face of theatre". He added: "No matter how hard Fornés's subjects can be, her work sits in the ear like luxurious reason." In a 2013 interview, Tony Kushner said: "She had terrifyingly high standards and was terribly blunt about what others did with her work. Her productions were unforgettable. She was really a magical maker of theater." Biography Early years Forné ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
